Portrait of (possibly) Pieter Gerritsz Bicker, pendant of (possibly) his wife Anna Codde

Maarten van Heemskerck painted this portrait, possibly of Pieter Gerritsz Bicker, as a pendant to a female portrait around 1529. Van Heemskerck trained under Jan van Scorel, the Dutch painter who had transformed northern Netherlandish painting through his Italian journey, and his portrait style shows the influence of Italian Renaissance psychological depth combined with the northern tradition's precise physiognomic observation. Pendant marriage portraits—facing each other across the open diptych—were standard in Flemish and Dutch bourgeois patronage, and Van Heemskerck's pair follows this convention while introducing the Italian Renaissance's new approach to spatial presence and psychological character. His later travels to Italy (1532–1535) would deepen his engagement with Italian Renaissance art, transforming his approach to both figure painting and landscape.

The panel demonstrates the artistic techniques characteristic of early sixteenth-century painting, with the careful rendering and color harmonies typical of the period's production.